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UN to US: Get Zimmerman

UN racism group’s wrongheaded priorities.

With nothing more important to do than make pompous pronouncements on an already resolved criminal case in Florida, a United Nations sub-group on racism called on the United States government late last week to finalize the ongoing review of the case involving the controversial shooting of black Trayvon Martin by the media-designated “white Hispanic” neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.

The United Nations Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent (the UN needs to put together a Working Group of Experts on Creating Group Names That Make Better Acronyms) released a statement calling upon “the US Government to examine its laws that could have discriminatory impact on African Americans, and to ensure that such laws are in full compliance with the country’s international legal obligations and relevant standards,” said “human rights expert” Verene Shepherd, who currently heads the group of experts (the UN News article mentions quite often that they are experts, to reassure you that as experts they are surely qualified to lecture the least racist nation in the world about how racist we are).

This comes after a trial in which Zimmerman was found innocent of all charges, and after a separate FBI investigation found no racism in Zimmerman’s motivation. That wasn’t enough for the experts at UNWGEPAD, who must have their hands full keeping up with trials involving people of African descent in every country around the world. Nor was it enough for Attorney General Eric Holder, who is mulling over a federal civil action against Zimmerman, and who instituted a tip line for Americans who want to act as Holder’s informants and dig up some useful dirt on Zimmerman.

“The Trayvon Martin case has highlighted the importance of the need to review those existing laws and policies that can have a discriminatory effect on the basis of race, as African Americans become more vulnerable to such discrimination,” pontificated Ms. Shepherd. Her statement didn’t specify which American laws and policies are discriminatory, although she may have had in mind the ‘Stand Your Ground” law that sparked so much misplaced outrage here in the States. That law had nothing to do with the Martin-Zimmerman case; it was invoked by neither the prosecution nor the defense. It’s unclear how, as an expert, Ms. Shepherd overlooked this detail.

“States are required to take effective measures to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists,” added Mutuma Ruteere, the UN’s “Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” since November 2011 (I don’t know how he gets all that on his business card). Thanks for reminding us from your office in Switzerland of something we already know, Mr. Ruteere, but as an expert, surely you are aware that the United States has already been spectacularly effective at eliminating racial discrimination. We have a black President.

The Working Group is composed of five independent experts: the aforementioned expert Shepherd, Chair-Rapporteur; Ms. Monorama Biswas from Bangladesh; Ms. Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France from, unsurprisingly, France; Ms. Mirjana Najcevska from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Ms. Maya Sahli from Algeria. It was established on April 25, 2002 following the World Conference against Racism held in Durban in 2001 (the same conference that was very nearly highjacked by parties determined to focus entirely on slavery reparations and labeling Zionism as racism).

The Group’s experts, among other activities, visit countries – often First World countries like Spain, Portugal, and Belgium, because you know, that’s where racism is most heavily concentrated, as well as the most happening nightlife – to “facilitate in-depth understanding of the situation of people of African descent” in various regions of the world and to focus on promoting “full and effective access to health, education and justice by people of African descent.” [Emphasis added] “Justice,” for those unfamiliar with the language of the left, means “social justice” and economic redistribution for the oppressed non-white peoples of the world – in other words, racial payback.

I’m no expert like the experts at UNWGEPAD, but it seems to me that if they are serious about addressing racism, xenophobia, and intolerance involving minorities and people of African descent (and by the way, aren’t we all ultimately people of African descent?), they could focus less on one shooting in the United States that has already been judged non-racist, and more on the slaughter of black Christians in Nigeria by Boko Haram, or the slaughter of Egyptian Christians at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, or the savage slaughter of minority white farmers by South African blacks, or the modern-day slavery being carried out in Arab countries.

If they insist on focusing on the plight of Americans of African descent, perhaps they could address the slaughter of black gun victims at the hands of other blacks in strictly gun-controlled Chicago, or the tragic epidemic of fatherless black households, or the disproportionately high rate of abortions in the black community, or the widespread problem of gangs, or the entertainment industry’s lucrative promotion of gangstas and drug dealers as black role models.

The “experts” at the United Nations Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent, like the UN itself, serve no real-world function. They occasionally travel somewhere on a fact-finding trip, then come back to their nice offices in Geneva or the UN and write official, bloodless reports and recommendations that are passed around in attractive folders to useless bureaucrats far removed from the brutal reality of the strong massacring the weak in distant corners of the earth. For some reason, savages committing genocide don’t bother to read those reports. The fact that UNWGEPAD took the time to lecture the United States on the urgency to finish its witch-hunt against the acquitted George Zimmerman speaks volumes about their misplaced priorities and ineffectual work.